Those of you who love taking photos and plan to go beyond the usual limits of the photo hobby now have the chance to spend your free time in a creative and challenging way.

Following six full years of experience with several groups of passionate photographers within the expat community, most of them parents and students in the American, British and French schools in Bucharest, I have decided to continue the group and private photo lessons this year starting October until late June next year.

There were fruitful years, the hands-on experience being much appreciated. We have completed our efforts with splendid exhibitions. The results are, according to everyone’s opinion, really paying off.

Lessons are based on the small group learning, each group being composed of no more than eight members, or one-to-one (private) lessons. Sessions are available in French, English and, of course, Romanian. There will be as many as twice per month two-hour sessions, basically once every two weeks or however your personal schedules allow you. The schedule can be easily tailored to your specific needs.

Lessons will take place in private locations, at least this is how it has worked so far, mainly dictated by the difficult traffic conditions in Bucharest.

Lessons will be held by Mihai Constantineanu who has been working for many years as a photojournalist and for some years now as a professional photographer.

Mihai, a 49 years old engineer, has a long experience built up in soft skills training sessions throughout many years.

In the first year the course is mainly structured to answer to the basic two needs of the beginners: better knowing your digital camera and means of improving the digital pics on the computers, both with a multitude of examples and hands-on experience.

A second-year course will go deeper into the artistic part of photography while identifying, for each of the students, its own photographic style after one year of training.

The lessons will mainly cover:

1. The basics of photography: how cameras work, a short history of their development, basic notions such as aperture, shutter speed, ISO and how they affect the final photographic output. Reaching the right exposure and how we can “teach” the camera to read our thoughts.

2. Various cameras and lenses on the market, their strong points and their limitations.

3. Settings, access to settings and making the right setting choice in various situations we encounter. Automatic, semi-automatic and manual modes of the cameras. Overriding the camera’s decisions to get full control over it.

4. Quality of light on photography, choosing the best timing for taking a photo.

5. Understanding camera’s automatic light metering, ways to prevent errors and why it is a must to override is decisions sometimes.

6. Basic composition rules.

7. Basic photo processing: resizing, cropping, adjusting exposure and many others, according to the level of the trainees.

The groups will be created according to people’s level of knowledge and the preference to either photo techniques or computer processing. The schedule is flexible and can be easily tailored to fit your specific needs.

Starting March, thematic photo outings will be organised on a monthly basis.